Meaning & Origins

English: from Old English stān ‘stone’, in any of several uses. It is most commonly a topographic name, for someone who lived either on stony ground or by a notable outcrop of rock or a stone boundary-marker or monument, but it is also found as a metonymic occupational name for someone who worked in stone, a mason or stonecutter. There are various places in southern and western England named with this word, for example in Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Somerset, Staffordshire, and Worcestershire, and the surname may also be a habitational name from any of these.